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Braving death, Baghdad's children start school http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-09-20T124048Z_01_GRA034034_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-IRAQ-SCHOOL.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-inDepthNews-2
Wed Sep 20, 2006
By Aseel Kami
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - "My son told me, 'Mom, I am afraid when I go to school there will be an explosion,'" sighed Iqbal Safi, bringing her six-year-old Ali to his first day at Jawad Salim primary school in central Baghdad. Ali, in a neat, turquoise, button-down short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, listened quietly by her side.
"But he is so happy he is coming," she said. "Usually he has to stay in our tiny flat. It is too dangerous to let him out, even to go to the kiosk down the street and buy juice."
The start of Iraq's school year was greeted with trepidation on Wednesday, but also joy, as parents accepted that their children might be in danger but hoped they would find relief from the boredom and fear of a city consumed by violence.
"We feel sorry for the students. How will they manage to study with all these bombings, killings and kidnappings?" said Suaad, an Arabic language teacher at nearby Zanabuq Primary School, asking that her surname not be used.
"But the students want to come to school, it is the only outlet left for them."
Most schools have fewer pupils this year, and many of the pupils are new, a result of families moving neighborhoods or fleeing the capital altogether. Teachers, too, have fled, which means classes are larger, with pupils from more than one year packed into a single room, often in shifts.
Few can offer any real protection from attackers. At Ali's primary school, one of two security guards was absent on leave. The other had been kidnapped.
Administrators do what they can. Headmaster Mohammed al-Amiri, 49, at the Imam al-Jawad Secondary School, formed a security committee of students and teachers to report every morning on strangers and strange cars in the area. He told pupils at their first morning assembly: "You study. We will give you a secure environment."
LOSING INTEREST
Maintaining standards is hard. The pupils are easily distracted, said Umm Ahmed, a geography and history teacher.
"The students have lost interest in study," she said. "They are teenagers, so easily affected by the general situation."
A 25-year-old biology teacher who asked not to be named said she no longer knew why she came to work. Salaries, generous in the initial days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, have been eroded by inflation. Hers is now worth about $110 a month.
"Nothing encourages us to come to work, neither the salaries nor the security situation," she said. "Maybe I'd be better off staying at home." The school was refurbished in 2003, but already the paint is flaking. Two fans blow air through a stiflingly hot classroom packed with about 50 teenagers.
Still, there was a sense of expectation in the air, and unmistakable happiness as children reacquainted themselves with friends they had not seen over the summer.
Mustafa, a stout boy of 14, said he moved to the area when his family fled their home in the south of the city after two of his uncles were killed and his father was kidnapped.
"Of course, my parents worry. They want me to come back home as soon as I finish class, not wander around with my friends."
But fear had not stopped him from passing his exams last year, and it will not stop him now, he said.
"I'm happy to be here. I don't let the security situation affect me, or my performance."
Back at Jawad Salim Primary School, another boy also named Ali, 12, was waiting for the afternoon shift to start.
"There's death out there, people are dying," he said matter-of-factly. "But despite all that I like to come to school."
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